ILTACON 2026 Highlights Exponential Growth in Legal Technology

September 2, 2026, 9:20 am CDT If I had to choose a word to describe the past year in legal technology, it would be “exponential.” We’ve seen exponential increases across the profession. From technology advancement, legal technology investment, legal AI company growth and constant change across the profession, so much has happened. And with so much money pouring into the legal technology industry in such a short time, it’s been hard to keep up. Nowhere was this more apparent than last week in Nashville, Tennessee, at ILTACON , the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association. Between the notable increase in attendees, the indulgence on the exhibit hall floor, the extravagant parties and the sheer number of partnerships announced, everything was exponentially grander, moving faster than ever before. Excess was easy to come by and hard to avoid. This year’s conference numbers highlighted how quickly change is occurring. According to the conference providers, there were 1,100 more registrants than last year, with 5,700 in attendance. The legal tech giants showed off their size, as their behemoth exhibit hall booths dwarfed those around them. And the parties! There were A-list performers, including Lady A at a Harvey event, Little Big Town at a Thomson Reuters party and my personal favorite: Sheryl Crow at a Legora bash. But enough about the conference’s grandiosities. Let’s talk about the legal technology news coming out of ILTACON, much of which centered around partnerships galore. At this stage of the artificial intelligence explosion, partnering is the easiest way for companies to expand to new customers, access valuable legal information, and make increasingly useful connections across systems and datasets. For example, Relativity announced a new integration with Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise for Legal through model context protocol, which provides a standardized framework for AI applications to connect with external data, tools and systems. The move follows Anthropic’s legal AI launch earlier this year, which included more than 20 MCP connectors to legal software tools, highlighting how fast major AI providers are connecting their platforms with legal tools and data. Similarly, Everlaw shared news of expanding partnerships, increasing access to its evidence and analytical tools across Claude, Gemini Enterprise for Legal, Harvey, CoCounsel Legal and Legora. Its newest was the Microsoft 365 Copilot connector, allowing lawyers to search and analyze matter evidence directly from their preferred third-party AI platforms. NetDocuments also emphasized interoperability, supporting MCP so firms can connect AI platforms, including Claude and Harvey, to their governed content. The company also focused on its legal context graph, which provides reusable context from law firm content stored in NetDocuments across its own AI tools and those of its partners. Next, Thomson Reuters announced the launch of its next-generation CoCounsel Legal, grounded in its new proprietary AI model, Thomson . And continuing the partnership trend, Thomson Reuters highlighted CoCounsel’s integration with platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Azure and Google, as was its broader strategy of selectively partnering, acquiring and building technology internally. Partnerships are also part of CS Disco’s road map as it expands on its AI offerings by integrating outside technology and expertise. Additionally, CS Disco is focusing on developing litigation-specific tools and workflows, including three AI-related rollouts shared at the conference: its Agentic AI platform; a unified litigation solution; and Tag Tuner, a new auto review capability that simplifies prompt iteration for document review. Likewise, Box , the document storage and collaboration company, relies heavily on partnerships with AI providers and legal technology platforms—including its Intapp alliance announced at the conference—allowing firms to connect conten